SFCT Essentials (Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy training).

SFCT Essentials is a 3-day course from APT (a leading provider of Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy training courses in the UK and Ireland). We bring this APT-Accredited course to your own organisation, for maximum cost-effectiveness, and up to 15 people can attend. (Refresher course also available.)

Executive Summary:

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy has taken the therapeutic world by storm over the last couple of decades, and has produced some very good results across a variety of conditions. For many professionals it is the default approach to therapy.

Even so, for some patients, perhaps especially those with personality disorder, CBT is not especially effective, and it is for such patients that Schema-Focused CT has developed. Pioneered by Jeffrey Young it pays much more attention to the patient's (early) experience and their development of 'maladaptive schemas'.

A schema might be defined as “a package of Behavioural, Biological and Emotional responses and Cognitive changes which can be triggered by a stimulus which in some way resembles a previous stimulus that produced that package of responses”. So the hypothesis is that – for example - a baby left to cry (a life-threatening event when a baby) may develop an 'abandonment schema' and so feel distress of 'life-threatening proportions' when, as an adult, their work-mates go off for a drink while forgetting to tell them.

The SFCT Essentials course covers:

The course aims to educate delegates about the nature of schemas, how they come about and what effects they may have in adult life. Then to apply that knowledge to individual people and patients, to identify what schemas a person may possess, to assess which schemas are adaptive and which are maladaptive. Then to examine ways of altering the maladaptive schemas, or their effects.

Coerced clients: how to work with clients who are obliged to see you, e.g. in forensic settings.

Case assessments and formulation.

Evidence-based practice, especially: is it working with this particular patient? How to evaluate progress with individual clients.

What this Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy course will do for you:

You will have a good understanding of what schemas are, both adaptive and maladaptive ones.

You will gain insight into your own schemas and how they affect you.

You will understand how schemas perpetuate themselves and, more than that, what may be done to undermine maladaptive schemas.

You will know about the challenging behaviour that schemas can produce, and the importance of working out what constitutes 'adaptive behaviour'.

You will be part of what is usually a high-interest, high energy event, where delegates address a fascinating phenomenon and what can be done to work with it.

What you receive as a result of attending the training:

You will be registered as having attended the course, thereby gaining APT's Level 1 accreditation, and receive a certificate to this effect. The accreditation gives you access to online resources associated with the course.

Your registration lasts indefinitely, and your accreditation lasts for 3 years and is renewable by sitting an online refresher which also upgrades your accreditation to APT Level 2 if you are successful in the associated online exam.

Your accreditation is given value by the fact of over 100,000 people having attended APT training. See APT accreditation for full details.

How can I access this training?

Option 1: Bring the course to your organisation:

We bring this 3-day course to your own organisation for a fixed, all-inclusive fee of £4,165 plus VAT and up to 15 people can attend.

If you or a colleague are a senior professional (e.g. consultant psychologist) and have a talent for communication and teaching, then you are welcome to apply to become an APT-accredited tutor. You could then tutor the course - or your chosen modules from it - in your own organisation, under license.

This is not only a highly appropriate use of senior professionals, but it also saves your organisation the tutor-component of the fee (around 50%) each time you run it or your chosen modules.

To see the full benefits of this and to see whether you are eligible, click the button:

Downloadable information sheet:

Share this course with your colleagues:

As a bona fide APT event, this course automatically has accreditation from The Association for Psychological Therapies. This means (i) that it contains the right amount of relevant information for its duration, and (ii) the information is presented in an engaging way, and in a way that will make it likely to be used after the course. APT verifies the accreditation by publishing the delegates' average ratings of relevance and presentation-quality for all its accredited courses. The accreditation is given value by over 100,000 professionals having attended APT courses.

Feedback Ratings.

We continuously monitor the quality of our training by obtaining feedback on the two key scales of relevance and presentation from every course delegate. Below are the average ratings for the last ten runnings of this course.

Average Presentation rating: 95%

Average Relevance rating: 93%

*These statistics were last updated in April 2017.

Written Feedback.

APT prides itself on the feedback we receive about our courses. Below are just some of the great comments the Schema-Focused Cognitive Therapy course has received.

"It's a wonderful insight into Schema Therapy. I am now very informed and equipped to utilize this knowledge in my practice. Thank you for a job well done."

"I found the trainer engaging and he brought the theory to life for me. Regularly relating theory to practice was very helpful. I would recommend the course to any mental health professional working with personality difficulties."